At Survivor Series 2019, The Fiend was victorious over Daniel Bryan as he retained his shiny, new WWE Universal Championship under the blood-red lights in Chicago.

For the most part, this should rule out Bryan for the title picture. However, that may not be the case, and the two might clash in a few weeks at TLC in an even bigger battle, with the key to it all being The Miz.

Originally, plans for the SmackDown episode following Crown Jewel were Bray Wyatt on MizTV. Travel issues prevented that from happening, and the NXT invasion and build to Survivor Series took over that week.

At the same time, Bryan was involved in a storyline with Sami Zayn and Shinsuke Nakamura. It's likely he would have won the Intercontinental Championship, and the plan was to have Bryan against AJ Styles and Roderick Strong at Survivor Series, but that didn't come to pass either.

Instead, The Fiend attacked Bryan out of nowhere to set up their title match. But while WWE could have moved The Miz away from the situation, he was actually positioned closer to the feud than ever before.

After Bryan and The Miz reignited their feud with a verbal battle on MizTV, they fought on SmackDown, and The Fiend interrupted by replacing The Miz and attacking Bryan.

Again, that could have been the end of that, but The Miz had a backstage segment with Bryan at Survivor Series where he tried to put aside their differences in a united front against Wyatt. Bryan simply told him to get out of his face.

If WWE sticks to its original advertising for Starrcade on December 1, the game plan was for Wyatt to fight The Miz in a steel cage match for the WWE Universal Championship (h/t Marc Middleton of WrestlingInc). That's been switched to Braun Strowman as the challenger, but the card is always subject to change, and sticking with The Miz makes more sense.

It's more than doubtful the title will change hands no matter what the situation as Starrcade isn't a priority event, it's too soon to take the belt off Wyatt, and neither Miz nor Strowman will probably be the next champion anyway.

But TLC is coming up quick around the corner, and there isn't much time to build a whole new storyline and challenger for Wyatt before December 15, so WWE has to work with the foundation already built.

The only logical step forward is for this feud between all three parties to continue, resulting in a Triple Threat TLC match.

It won't bring any finality to the Bryan vs. The Miz rivalry, but as far as The Fiend is concerned, he'll have beaten both separately and once together.

After that, it will be time to set up Royal Rumble 2020, wherein enough weeks will go by to build a new challenger like Braun Strowman to fight The Fiend before rolling into the Road to WrestleMania. Then, it's just a title defense in the Elimination Chamber in March and the final few weeks before the biggest show of the year where Wyatt will probably battle The Big Dog.

Anything other than Wyatt against The Miz at Starrcade, followed by a Triple Threat that also includes Bryan at TLC will be a complete surprise.

Anthony Mango is the owner of the wrestling website Smark Out Moment and the host of the podcast show Smack Talk on YouTube, iTunes and Stitcher. You can follow him on Facebook and elsewhere for more.